In broadcast networks, content is made available to multiple users, typically in synchronous fashion, without being specifically addressed to individual user equipment devices in point-to-point fashion. Examples of broadcast networks include cable and satellite television networks, satellite radio networks, IP networks used for multicasting content and networks used for podcasts or telephony broadcasts/multicasts. Content may also be broadcast over the airwaves. The content may be consumed by users in real-time or on a time-translated basis (e.g., recorded for later playback). Broadcast network content may be distributed or re-distributed in a direct address network, e.g., an IP network or data enabled telephony network.
Broadcast network content often includes programming content and informational content. For example, in the case of a television network, the programming content may include news programs, serial television programs, movies, paid programming or other content. The informational content may include advertisements, public service announcements, tags, trailers, weather or emergency notifications and a variety of other content, including both paid and unpaid content. Items of programming content and/or informational content constitute assets of asset providers such as advertisers or programming content providers.
In order to achieve a better return on their investment, asset providers often desire to target their assets to a selected audience. The case of advertisers on a cable television network is illustrative. For instance, an advertiser or a cable television network may desire to target its ads to certain demographic groups based on, for example, gender, age, income, geographic location, etc. Accordingly, tinder the conventional advertising model, once an advertiser has created an ad that is targeted to a desired group of viewers (e.g., targeted group) the advertiser may attempt to procure insertion-times in the network programming when the targeted group is expected to be among the audience of the network programming.
Targeting based on geographic location is of particular interest for certain advertisers. Continuing with the example of ads on a television network, an advertiser may desire to target ads or customize ads based on geographic zones or the like. For example, an advertiser may wish to limit ad distribution to locations proximate to a business outlet or to customize ads with contact information that varies depending on location, e.g., contact information for the local automobile dealership or information specific to a voting district or precinct. Moreover, an advertiser may desire to customize offerings based on location, e.g., to implement a plan of market protection at minimum cost. For example, a network operator may desire to provide a special offer to existing subscribers in a specific geographic area to avoid losing subscribers to a competing service provider. In such cases, it would be advantageous to target or customize ads based on the location of asset delivery.
Unfortunately, location targeting of ads in broadcast networks has generally been available only on a coarse basis. In the case of airwave television broadcast networks, for example, national and local ad spots may be designated. In this manner, certain ads can be “targeted” with respect to large broadcast areas, such as on a city-by-city basis. In cable networks, somewhat finer targeting is possible. For example, cable plants are generally divided into a number of subdivisions associated with network nodes. In some cases, different ads can be inserted at different nodes, allowing for finer location based targeting than is generally possible in airwave broadcast networks.
Additionally, due to the nature of broadcast networks, the ability to target assets to the targeted groups based on other audience classification parameters has been limited. That is, because undifferentiated content is typically broadcast to all users in a broadcast area, only coarse or group targeting based on such parameters has generally been possible. For example, as noted above, advertisers have conventionally purchased spots on programs believed to have an audience that roughly matched target demographics. Of course, though ratings information allows for some degree of certainty in predicting audience size and composition, the actual audience may vary considerably from the prediction. Moreover, even where the audience matches the targeted group in a gross sense, a significant portion of the audience may be outside of the targeted group.
In order to provide a further level of targeting, tags are sometimes used in connection with ads. In a typical application, such tags may include textual information that is appended to an ad, for example, on a black background or still-frame graphics for a few seconds at the conclusion of the ad. Thus, for example, if the ad was an automobile ad produced for general dissemination, the tag might provide information for a local dealer. Such tags gave generally been limited to regional granularity or, perhaps, somewhat less coarse granularity corresponding to network topology or distribution subdivisions in the case of cable television networks. In any case, such location targeting has generally been coarse and limited to network topology, which may or may not match the desired location zones for targeting. Moreover, targeting of such tags has generally been location dependent and has not been directly based on other targeting parameters, e.g., related to demographics.